Step by Step/Issue 12
This is Issue #12 of Step by Step. It is the sixth issue and final of Volume Two. Fission Malcolm watched the soldiers struggle to produce the yellow floodlights. The collection rattled as they dispersed out from a storage room sitting at the far side of the gymnasium. The floodlights clanged across the waxy floor as they were gliding past icy layers. With two soldiers at each floodlight, about eight for the four corners of the gymnasium, soon there were four floodlights erected and mounted at each side. Together as one, the floodlights zapped to life. Their white light lit up the school gymnasium and shoved the darkness away. As if on synchronized time, thunder boomed and rumbled the red brick walls of the gymnasium. The shock waves shook the floodlights, but they continued to cook the gymnasium with warm light. A worthy replacement for the absent sun. The floodlights sent Malcolm's hands for his eyes. He squinted and turned around to deter the blinding light. He wiped at his aching sockets and allowed his assault rifle to remain across his chest. Resting there. Waiting for its one job. It had been five months since the plague was hailed to be deflected through force. Those who reanimated were lethal beings, had stated the bunch of amateur researchers, were to be detained immediately. They were contagious. Pus-riddled sacks of dragging flesh with legs. Malcolm checked himself. Then he looked up. Straight up to the hidden ceiling where the darkness had crept into for its survival. The same ceiling he had looked into when he was notified that his wife had gotten the disease. Malcolm tensed up and sucked in a large breath of air. She hadn't a fortnight left to live. He remembered still being at the school and unable to leave. Stuck to the school's military station like clouds to a blue sky on a Wednesday morning. Malcolm held back his lips. Rubbed his temples. He remembered the last time he had saw their little boy, Danny. Smiles and all, before Sharon left them both. He had been so stupid. So dumb. All he had done was go to the barracks and lay his back on a bent, twisted chair. The starry night of that time did not much to please him. All he had done was stare out into the exposed creases of the windows which had been freshly bolted to the wall with nails. Blocking off any sort of ensuing chaos which had, by then, crept into the city. It was that day that Malcolm questioned himself. His sanity. Why he was at the military station and allowing for people to die every second. Particularly, Malcolm couldn't grasp it. He couldn't hold his mindset together. Like a plate broken into millions of pieces and the owner trying their best to keep it together. Malcolm quite wasn't sure if he could trust himself at all. The scattered, shiny dots of distant stars was the thing that molded him into shape. With his dry eyes gawking out the peeks of window film, he eased up on the chair. He had spread his back out on the chair's latitude and rested back his head whilst the chair whispered out a cracking groan. Those stars. Out there. Acting like Malcolm was small. A little, puny speck in the city. Malcolm didn't care. He did not want to. His wife was another number added to the sum of thousands who had perished in the great inferno of the disease. He wondered why he did not shed tears that night. Would it have been the right thing to do? He was being himself now. A man. A soldier needing to a platoon in a wild mess of a school. Malcolm twisted a glance to a commune of people who had which gathered around. Frankly, Malcolm could have cared less. But the guttural sounds released not a moment later attracted him like the opposite ends of magnets. The crowd of a little more than a dozen refugees shuffled. Malcolm could barely edge a view from his distance of ten feet. He recognized a voice from the center escape the tendrils of crowd's body. It was that paramedic. Lilian. Most likely with her novice companion. He spun his head to the side. Facing two soldiers at their posts. “Stay on high alert!” Malcolm found himself skipping across the gymnasium in a hurried fashion. He unshackled the assault rifle from his next. It took three seconds for him to realize the horrid patient that was stapled to the crowd's nucleus. “Make a path!” He shouted in a fury of tone. On the fifth second, he nudged through the crowd and prodded a way until he found the blonde paramedic. Then the soldier in camouflaged drab. A beard hanging on the lower portion of his face. It took Malcolm a second longer for it to sink in. “Gordon?” Lilian swiped a hand across her face. The sweat hung drenched across her face. She had tried to conceal the stress that was consuming her essence. Her fingers fiddled hastily with the medical instruments she held. A morphine injection. Looking up, she found Kerry all open eyed and struggling to drown out the growing murmurs that surrounded the two. “I'm going to put this into him, now,” she said to Kerry, hoping that her apprentice would observe the lesson. Lilian checked the needle again. Loaded with the pain-numbing drug. Her face fell to the one of Gordon. “This should help.” “What is that for?” Kerry locked her eyes on the morphine. Lilian retracted back, pulling on the needle to let the fluid drain out into position. “It'll stop the pain receptors in his spine.” She paused and scanned Gordon. About six feet. Maybe more than two hundred pounds of weight minus the baggage of equipment and clothing that had wrapped itself around the poor man's body. “Perfect dosage.” “Does he really need that?” Lilian pursed her lips and found her way back to the fragile needle. Gordon had said nothing through the pain except muttering incomprehensible speech. She was sure the pain reliever would help him. “He'll be okay. Once we get him stabilized it'll be easier to get him away from this place.” Kerry scrunched up her nose. “Where's that then?” “Hopefully we can move into the cafeteria and lay him down,” she paused and pointed to the pant leg around Gordon's only uninjured, fully working thigh. “Lift it up.” Shaking from the minimal, yet strong cold, Kerry obliged. “Don't you have to remove the bullet?” Lilian scoffed. She felt Gordon's thigh with her index finger. Tried to find a blood vessel. She tapped her finger against the thigh several times, mostly out of impatience. Where did that one girl go? She should have been here by now with the ice. Something, rather than the intense morphine drug, else to keep Gordon from going into shock. She looked up and shook her hand, nearly to her own amusement. “That's only in the movies, but if we have the time...” Lilian reeled back the needle after shooting out the liquid into Gordon's bloodstream. Nearly right after, she realized the morphine was beginning to kick in. The soldier's chest let out hoarse, double-stepped breaths. “What did you give him?” Malcolm said from the sideline. Lilian heard the grumpy, low voice and shot her eyes up, Not much of a surprise to see the deep words leave the lips of a man about twice her height. “Morphine,” she said. “And nothing more.” ---- The cigarette fumes puffed out into the stench of moisture in the gymnasium. Lyle let the cancer stick rest out the corner of his mouth. The smoke shook his arms as they rustled down his gray hoodie cap. It wasn't the right time to think about the meaning of life and how one cigarette would put an extra nail in his coffin. When it was time. It had all started with Wyatt. The humble informant. Lyle laughed to himself at the irony. All the days of supplying the refugees at the school were gone. Deleted. The rug pulled right from the soles of their bare feet. No more blankets to give out, no more bottled water to quench a lucky soul's thirst, and hell, not even another cancer stick to chew on. Lyle picked the burnt cigarette from edge of his mouth. For a moment, he pondered on where everyone had gone. In general, there were a cluster of people wandering around the gymnasium. The majority were refugees. Most bunched up around the where that guy had fell with the gunshot. He sighed, releasing a strain of smoke from his spent lungs. His throat burned, but he rested his back against the gymnasium wall. Up in the bleachers, he had a full front view from afar. Nothing could hurt him from where he was. If whatever even contemplated on that even had the fucking guts to carry it out. Nolan was probably in either the cafeteria or the main office. Lyle was beyond positive. Besides, the white boy wasn't like Wyatt. Not a soldier ordered to his death by an erratic leader. Lyle held himself back from drawing his eyes over to Brock, who laid in harmony with his maimed leg being inspected by a nurse in blue. Trying to refrain from the glance, he found Joseph slumped in a bleacher seat at the lowest row. The fool was just sitting there staring off at the heavens. For god's sake, Lyle felt embarrassed by looking at the poor dude. Lyle tapped his cigarette against the bleacher's metal and hopped over. “Yo, Joseph.” Joseph took a second before turning around. “Jackson?” “The one and only, baby.” Lyle popped his fingers in the air. “You sticking out like a sore thumb.” Lyle continued tossing down leg after leg over the bleacher space. He stopped near Joseph's back and took a long inhale of the death cigar. His arms tingled. “You ain't gonna go be with ya boys?” Joseph cupped his hands on his neck. “There's no point.” “Oh hell, man.” Lyle patted Joseph's right shoulder and dropped to Joseph's right on the black and cold bleacher metal. “That's what I like to hear, but I don't think you've noticed; this is your job, dude.” “No it isn't.” “I beg to differ. And to be honest, the fact that there's dead people walking around this school sure is frightening me.” Joseph said nothing. He looked past the gymnasium's harsh lighting and into the doors that branched out into the halls. “You didn't see what I saw.” Lyle grinned. “I saw enough to know that I'm capable of shitting my pants.” Lyle took another go at the cigarette, flicking some ash to his own right side. “I'd kill for some Dr. Pepper, man.” Joseph balled his hands into fists and wiped the exhaustion from his face. “Me too,” he said. “Ah, see? This shit's contagious!” Lyle whooped in joy, cracking a smile with more emotion than everyone in the vicinity put together. His hands jerked like they were being shocked with electricity. “Soon 'nuff I'll show you my stash of boomboxes.” Joseph mildly smirked. “Where'd you get that?” “The cig?” Lyle creaked a smile. “Classified shit, bro.” ---- Brock mustered up a low groan as he shifted in position. His leg hurt like a bitch. Twice over. He nearly gagged from the excruciating, burning sensation ripping throughout his leg. Brock's face was a sweaty mess and his eyes were had glossed over. His nurse had left not ten minutes before. He had awoken to the clash of a crack of thunder rampaging through the streets. Streets containing the dead. He had to get up. Back to work and right where he left off. Bashing their heads in. Blinking several times, his vision cleared into a quite blurry state. Then, Brock realized the idiots had commissioned all of the floodlights. They were really pushing it. Whoever was in charge of them sure had a power outage in stock. “You look like you need a shower.” Lyle's voice came to Brock's ears. Brock craned his neck up and towards the dark brown irises of Lyle C. Jackson. They lacked the contents of fear and even repulsion. Disgust for Brock and his mutilated leg. “W—what?” He was cut off as the criminal reached for something and lifted It to Brock's mouth. Now that he felt the object drop into his weak hands, he figured it to be a water bottle and found the strength to down the water inside it. Lyle had given him water. Who knew that two atoms of hydrogen and one oxygen atom could spring the life back into a person? Certainly not Brock. The pristine water flushed away the dryness from his brittle throat. He muttered a thanks after emptying the entire bottled water. It crinkled up as Brock squeezed for more. But it had ended. Just like the rain had begun to do that same moment. “Normally, I would have let you turn into sandpaper here and not have had a second thought,” Lyle said, “but I need the competition, y'know?” Brock pressed a stare onto Lyle. A sudden bitterness took hold of him. He should be dead. Gone with the wind like his family. Mary and the boys. Oh god. No. He should have been left there on the weed-filled soil and left to die. He tried to keep a smile up. “Yeah, yeah.” Brock didn't know what to feel. He had the pain biting at his leg. The unrelenting destructive thoughts escaping his mind and recycling themselves. Dead, dead. Should have died back there. Lyle took the rumpled up plastic bottle from Brock's swollen fingers. “I'll go call the nurse, the one with the sweet butt.” And then Lyle went off. Brock lowered his brows. His teeth clenched together and grinding. But at what? He had no idea if it was at his coward sense of hope. Or Lyle. The damned criminal. It was all his fault. Lyle had set him up. Destroyed everything Brock had lived for. You did this to me. Brock unfolded his legs, gritting his teeth at the pain. It couldn't even be called pain. It was like someone sprinkled hell across his thigh. “Lyle—“ Brock cringed as he tried to stand up. A dizzy sensation overthrew him and churned his stomach. His face crinkled up as he groaned at the nausea. He collapsed back to the gymnasium floor and laid his forehead on his bended knee. He tried to conceal the pain. Keep it hidden. But from what? Brock locked his fingers n the floor and took a steady lurch upwards. A colorful spectrum of color invaded his vision. “Lyle!” Brock wobbled on his shaky leg, his spine enduring his two hundred pounds of weight. It didn't take any longer for him to hit the floor again. Out of breath, he realized Lyle had heard him. But as he looked up, Lyle wasn't paying attention to Brock. He smacked his face against the floor. His ears popped and his neck exploded with intense, revolting agony. He drifted up as he laid down, strewn across the floor like a blanket, he watched an ensemble of soldiers race over to the front door. “On me!” Malcolm spat. He adjusted the carbine into his hands and nodded to the two drowsy guards at the front entrance. This was it. They were going to do it. Malcolm was going to do it. As his shoulders straightened in alignment, he let his head sway over to the door. “Unlock it.” “Are we really going to do this?” The voice came from behind the grouping of soldiers. It sounded so anxious. Bland. “I mean, like, we can just wait here and wait for one of the others!” Malcolm surveyed the soldiers. He had kept two unnecessary soldiers back at their posts. In front of him now, the core of the remaining soldiers all stared at him. He was their leader. Their messiah. While their hearts had sunken to their lowest of lows, Malcolm thought over his plan. A plan formulated through the aches of mind. “I know what I'm doing,” Malcolm barked. “And it will work.” He turned towards the two guards at work with the lock. He listened as the padlock let out a satisfying crack and breathed out to a limp form. The guards creaked open the door to Malcolm's inhale. Malcolm couldn't believe his eyes at first. The rumbling, tumbling mob of dead civilians and military units shambled through the hallway. Malcolm snapped his eyes and lifted up his assault rifle. “Don't shoot,” he warned. The breathless orchestra of deep, low hanging moans coursed through and into the gymnasium. Malcolm was sure he heard the refugees inside gasp. He watched the dead turn their heads towards the crowd of armed soldiers. They piled their legs over fresh, consumed corpses. Refugees. Soldiers. Children. Malcolm then watched several trip and stumble. Their voices lingered and struck him. He gulped, keeping his assault rifle steady. He batted his eyes. “''Shoot''.” “I ain't shooting, sergeant!” The same voice erupted. “There's kids in the—“ Malcolm pressed his fingers against the carbine's side. “I said shoot, dammit, shoot them like hell!” His assault rifle recoiled in surprise, bolting with smoke as three bullets coasted through the air. Malcolm felt the bullets ripple through the dense air. And he felt the pleasure when all three rounds silenced one of the crazies and threw them off their feet. “Shoot!” He didn't need to say it once more. A chorus of gunfire crackled in the hallway. Light from the gunpowder sparks produced a hot, tangy feeling in the atmosphere. Malcolm let his finger compress the trigger and down several of the crazies. “In the head, shoot 'em there.” All that was left in the hallway was pure smoke. Pure smoke as Malcolm continued eliminating his bullets until his magazine went dry like the storm clouds above Indianapolis. And as dry a feeling can be detected when Malcolm laid eyes on a little boy with a portion of head blown off. Malcolm stood paralyzed. His pale brown eyes glued to the exhausted ones of Hector Pacino, his handgun aimed at where the boy once stood, who by then had crumpled to the floor. Hector rose a steady hand. “They locked me out.” The hallway was a junk pile of dead, rotting corpses. Bullet-ridden. Flies creeping into them and taking snack. “I swear!” “I'm not opening up!” A rough voice shouted from beyond the cafeteria's door. Alexander. He sounded off, nervous. Frightened. “You're gonna have to suck me off first, and then I might consider!” ---- The last of the rain had fallen. The storm clouds remain afar; brewing their electrical arrows of light. Baring them and streaking them across the might of the sky. Jacob drowned his head sorrowful sobs. He gazed upon the remains of rainwater that drizzled down the tattered edges of glass which once made up his windshield. His salt and pepper hair was fixed at the sides of his head. Each strand of hair had been doused with the ferocious excrement of the storm clouds. The showering water dropped down in huge gulps. The wind currents swallowed up the car, forcing it to let the numbing cold deter onto Jacob and Sarah. Sarah was alive. She had to be. Jacob stroked the side of her chestnut curls. Kerry could pass for a complete imitation of Sarah. The two and their bold brown hair. “Sarah?” Jacob led his hand down to her neck. It was pale. Chalk-white. Any previous color that had once enlightened his wife had been drained out. “I can't do this...” His hand melted into her bushy hair. Lost in it like his mind. He locked eyes with Sarah's. They were still there. Half opened. She was awake. His wife was still there. “Oh dear god, Sarah?” Jacob leaned his uncontrollable gaze to his wife's vivid face. She was twitching, her lips parting. Her skin had begun to smolder and stretches of rash consumed her face which had before resembled the frosty tundra of Antarctica. At that moment, her pupils formed into petite spots surrounding by blazing red lines much like lava seeping out of the earthen ground. She coughed a raspy cough. She was trying to speak. Jacob listened intently, starting to halt his sobbing. “I know you're there, Sarah.” His wife was not there. She was far from reach. But she seemed so close. Her eyes were dull patches of gray irises. Her lips had gone dry, covered in mucus that oozed from her mouth. She moaned, prying her head away from Jacob's stern fingers. He was startled. He looked back at his wife, confused. His hair shaking as his head turned side to side. “No,” he said, “no!” To no avail, his wife continued to produce screeching moans. Her throat gurgled, filling the car with rocking noise. Jacob backed away, leaning his back to the edge of his car seat. His back sinking into the creaks and irregular space of his car door. “Sarah, please, Sarah...” He dropped his head, catching it with bow hands. His wife in an effort to reach him with her snapping hands from her seat in which she had her seat belt compressing her back. The rain exhausted, pulled back. Scores of sunlight drew into the car. But it remained a dark world with Jacob screaming in anger and repent. He let go of his head and looked up, tracing his eyes over to the dead face of his wife. She scowled. Her jaw loose and her tongue hanging up at the sight of Jacob. His flesh. Fresh to dine on... She stopped. A gunshot creased across her forehead. Sarah hadn't the time to react. Her eyes drooped and rolled back into her skull. Her shoulders went limp, slumped back into position in her seat. And then there was nothing left of Sarah Davis except her infiltrated body which once was, but would never be again, alive. Jacob scrolled his eyes up. “You mother—!“ The owner of the black handgun came into view. His dark, curly hair fell to cover up his eyes. They were drenched from the bombardment of rainwater. The olive-skinned man briefly frowned. His leather jacket adjusting. “Shut that hole in your face, gringo." The man says flatly. "Or maybe I'll just have to shoot you dead right here.” The man swiped up his gun, cocking back the rounds and centering it on the Jacob's surprised face. A flash of a silver cross pendant was the last thing Jacob saw of the man. Before Jacob could respond, his car door slid open, nearly off its hinges, and he landed in a puddle of muddy water. His spine sent a deep hurt everywhere. Suddenly, every part of Jacob ached and. Winded, he looked up and saw a face. Not a human one. A white plastic mask. Then, everything faded to darkness. Although, the streets, filled with unmoving automobiles and flame, were already black and foggy. 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